


Fought it Through the Teeth

by bankrobbery



Category: Detroit Evolution - Fandom, Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Asexual Character, Detroit Evolution, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Jealousy, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23983141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bankrobbery/pseuds/bankrobbery
Summary: Nines brings him coffee in the morning and gives back as good as he gets and it’s not like Gavin is so fucking stupid he doesn’t know what the twisting in his gut means.Or, three times someone thought Gavin and Nines were together and one time they actually were.
Relationships: Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Comments: 24
Kudos: 427





	Fought it Through the Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the [Detroit Evolution](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apUn-YMMdZ8&t=3590s) universe and takes place both before and after the events of the movie.

-

**1**

-

They’ve been partners without killing each other for six months and Gavin has started to realize he can feel the first traitorous beginnings of complacency and familiarity that will no doubt end up biting him in the ass. This wouldn’t be the first time he had let his guard down, to go against his better judgment and allow himself to fall into a comfortable routine only to have that stability dragged violently away. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before; it’s not like it won’t happen this time. 

Admitting to himself that Nines is a good thing - that he’s something positive that has come out of this shitshow Gavin calls his life - takes time. It takes effort. It’s not something he’s willing to voice into existence outside of his own screwed up brain and it’s not something he’s willing to examine in any close details, but it’s there all the same. 

They’ve been partners for six months the first time it happens. 

They’re undercover at a protest when someone opens fire and ruins Gavin’s fairly decent day. He’s in the back of an ambulance he doesn’t need to be in, receiving medical aid that would no doubt be better utilized on someone else, wishing for a smoke he knows he’s not going to get. 

Nines is sitting just close enough to infringe on what Gavin would call a moderate bubble of personal space, his LED spinning in a shade of yellow that does nothing to ease the burning in Gavin’s left bicep, and he’s got what can only be described as a resting bitch face. So really still a fairly typical day for them. 

“It’s fine - it’s a graze - a _scratch_ ,” Gavin tells him for what feels like the third time. “I’m not going to the fucking hospital.”

“I completely agree,” Nines says, in that way he does when he’s absolutely not about to be agreeable. “Once the EMT has decided you don’t need to be admitted, of course. You were shot, Gavin. Your heart rate is abnormally high and-”

“It should tell you what I’m thinking when you scan me,” Gavin continues onward, waving his right hand in the air in emphasis. “That way I don’t have to waste my breath telling you to go fuck yourself.”

The EMT at his shoulder, who must be competing with Nines to see who can crowd his personal space the most efficiently, blows out a breath and darts her eyes between them for a moment like she wants to say something but thinks better of it. Gavin wishes everyone had that superpower. 

“Don’t let my partner’s volatile demeanor upset you,” Nines tells her, with a forced smile, and all the practice of someone who has had to make this excuse more than once in the last twenty four hours. “This is one of his more pleasant moods, I assure you.”

She huffs out a laugh, as though surprised, and says, without even the faintest trace of sarcasm, “Well he’s very lucky to have such a patient boyfriend.”

The record scratch in Gavin’s brain feels so loud he’s sure they can all hear it. 

“Whoa, hold on,” Gavin cuts in, both eyebrows raised. “Not boyfriend.”

It’s not even the first time someone has made that leap over the word ‘partner’, but it’s the first time they’ve done it in the last six months; it’s the first time anyone makes the mistake with him and Nines and that’s weird, right? That’s a weird leap to make. 

Nines flinches imperceptibly, and Gavin only catches it because it’s been _six months_ and he’s a detective, alright? He pays attention to shit and sometimes that includes his partner. Normally this would be easy. Normally he knows what Nines looks like when he’s angry, and when he’s confused, and when he’s attempting to rationalize something irrational, but this isn’t any of those. Nines’ gaze flickers to Gavin’s, just briefly enough for Gavin to feel like he has no idea what the fuck he’s thinking, before he turns his attention back to the EMT.

“Detective Reed is my work partner,” Nines clarifies smoothly, like this sort of thing happens all the time, but his LED remains steadfastly yellow. “We’re with the DPD.”

“Oh,” she says, and busies herself with wrapping gauze around Gavin’s injured arm, like she hasn’t completely upset the balance of Gavin’s world with a single sentence. “I’m sorry I should have realized.”

-

**2**

-

The second time it happens they’ve been partners for eight months. He shouldn’t be able to anticipate the tilt of Nines’ smirk, and Nines shouldn’t know how he takes his coffee, and Gavin shouldn’t get so fucking comfortable but here they are all the same. 

They’re waiting at a bar for one of Gavin’s contacts to show and he’s two Old Fashioneds too deep while still on the clock, but it’s been a rough week - it’s been a rough year - and he doesn’t give a shit regardless. The alcohol eases the tension in his shoulders that feels like a lead weight he’s been carrying around and it makes it easier to let out a breath and get as close as he can to decompressing. 

It’s too good to be true though. Because it’s been fifteen minutes since Nines stepped outside to make a phone call to the precinct and Gavin’s day has just been shitty enough that he’s willing to bet it’s not because he’s catching up on office gossip with dispatch. 

Gavin waves his lighter at the bartender to signal he’ll be back and steps out the door and into the evening air. He doesn’t have to go far. He finds Nines four feet from the entrance, with a heavily muscled man towering over him like that’s all it’s going to take to intimidate an android who was built for modern warfare. The urge is there to take a step back and let the whole thing unfold as it’s going to, but that’s probably not what he should do. Maybe it’s better not to let this man break his knuckles on Nines’ face. Serve and protect, as it were. 

“Problem, Nines?” Gavin asks, stepping up beside him, both hands tucked into his jacket pockets.

“No problem,” Nines assures him, but he’s a criminally bad liar.

“This your android?” The man asks, like Nines is a piece of equipment that is capable of being owned by anyone. The edges of his mouth are pulled downwards, the tension in the line of his shoulders so tight it makes Gavin’s ache in sympathy. He gestures to a woman standing behind him who looks scandalized. “He was hitting on my wife.”

“It was not my intention to cause distress. I apologize if my commentary caused you discomfort,” Nines explains, glancing sideways at Gavin in a way that is unnecessary. Like Gavin is not painfully aware of how uptight and robotic Nines is without having to explain to some meathead at a bar that he wouldn’t know the first thing about hitting on his wife. 

Normally this would be a great opportunity to hit the low ball being flung at him and make a dig at Nines’ truly spectacular failure at social interaction, but tonight the idea sits uneven in his stomach. This drunk is digging his finger into Nines’ chest and it bothers Gavin in a way he’s not ready to examine, so he vetoes his normal route at pointing out the ineffectiveness of androids in modern society and instead opts for intimidation. 

“He’s not my android. He’s my _partner,_ shithead,” Gavin stresses, because it’s one thing to get handsy with a random android at a bar and it’s another entirely to threaten one that works for the DPD. He loves these moments where there’s an opportunity to bring some asshat down a peg or two, even if Nines doesn’t need the backup - could easily detach the finger poking him in the chest from the man who owns it - but it doesn’t play out like that at all. 

The guy deflates a little, like some of the fight has been taken out of him, and he takes a step back in what appears to be embarrassment. Which is not the reaction that Gavin expected; it’s not the usual reaction he gets when he’s suggested to someone they’re toeing the line with being arrested. 

“Partners. They’re _partners_ , Mary,” the guy says in wonder, like he’s had an epiphany. He turns his frown onto his wife. “You gonna get me in a fight thinking some gay android is hitting on you?”

Gavin chokes on his own tongue and steadfastly ignores the way Nines glances at him out of the corner of his eye.

“How was I supposed to know he was gay?” the woman, Mary, asks, with a shrug of her shoulders, like starting bar fights with her overzealously jealous husband is a hobby more than an accidental occurrence. “Gay men can flirt too.”

“You always do this,” the man continues, in a voice that suggests this is not the first time they’ve had this conversation. Gavin does not get paid enough to be a marriage counselor, an android babysitter, and a detective all on the same day. 

He takes advantage of the couple beginning to bicker in earnest to curl his fingers around the crook of Nines’ elbow, to lean in and ask, “If you’re done here can we get back to work?”

“Watching you drink yourself into a stupor is what passes for work now?” Nines asks dryly, but the tightness in his arm relaxes underneath Gavin’s hand all the same and he lets himself be pulled back into the bar. If he notices the elevation in Gavin’s heart rate and the clamminess of his palm he keeps it to himself. 

-

**3**

-

It’s been ten months, and they’re three days into investigating a series of disappearances at a local club that caters to more eclectic tastes, when Gavin realizes the joke and the punchline all rolled into one is this: it doesn’t bother him that someone might think he and Nines are together.

Maybe it did once. He doesn’t know when it stopped. 

There’s a lot to be said about his own personal brand of denial and even more to be said about the stubbornness in his own head, but he stopped feeling confident enough to lie to himself about Nines back before he even knew what to call this unpleasant sharpness digging into his chest. They’ve been partners for nearly a year and it’s not just that it’s the longest he’s had someone willing to put up with his shit - it’s that it’s the longest he’s _wanted_ someone to.

The first six months are Gavin biding his time and waiting for the moment that does them in, that wrecks this tentative thing they’re trying to balance for the good of the department. There are a half a dozen times he expects to walk into Fowler’s office and be told Nines has requested a transfer, that he’s reached the limit of even an android’s patience, but it never happens. Nines sticks around for a month, then two, then ten. Nines brings him coffee in the morning and gives back as good as he gets and it’s not like Gavin is so fucking stupid he doesn’t know what the twisting in his gut means.

So no, it doesn’t bother him that someone might think they’re together. It bothers him that someone thinks that Gavin would take that plunge, that he would risk everything good in his life, without being one hundred percent sure he’s got the stones to back it up. Because he is worthless - is a disaster on the verge of spinning out of control at a moment’s notice - and it’s not like he doesn’t know that; he is _intimately_ aware of his place in the grand scheme of things, thank you very much, and that’s why he doesn’t get involved with other people or androids or who-the-fuck-ever. 

Gavin tries not to let the opinions of other people get under his skin, but the first time someone says to Nines, "You could do better," it hits him like a punch to the throat.

It’s not like he hasn’t had the same thought before in his own head, but it sounds a lot different coming out of someone else’s mouth. After all, that’s the entire reason it’s been so long since he’s dated, right? Because he knows he’s not good enough. 

Jacob is no one, but he used to be someone. He used to be someone Gavin felt close enough to open up to, to give away some of the pieces of himself he still regrets parting with, and a year of his absence hasn’t sweetened the tumultuous ending to their relationship. The way he’s standing next to Nines, body curved towards him in easy interest, doesn’t make that particular pill any easier to swallow. 

“Nines, let’s go already,” Gavin tries, even as the uneasiness in his stomach grows. They’ve got a lead to follow and anything is better than staying here.

Jacob takes a step back and takes another long drag from his cigarette before he’s asking Nines, “Wait - you’re here with him?”

“Yeah,” Gavin says, before Nines can answer. “Yeah, he’s here with me. That a problem?”

And he doesn’t mean it like it comes out. He doesn’t mean to say Nines is _with_ him. Except the burning in his chest feels so disastrously like jealousy, curling itself inside of him tenfold like a spring full of tension, and it comes out exactly like that. It comes out possessive - and defensive - and Gavin can tell by the straightening in Jacob’s posture that it didn’t go unnoticed.

“Not that it’s any of my business,” Jacob says to Nines, even though his eyes stay boring into Gavin, “but you could do a lot better than this asshole.”

And that’s the worst part of it, right? That he’s not wrong. Nines could do better - fuck, Nines _deserves_ better. One day he’s going to realize that. One day he’s going to wake up and realize he deserves better than Gavin’s shit and that’s the day Gavin’s meticulously stacked house of cards is going to crumble into a heap on the table. It’s all just a matter of time, isn’t it? Until everything turns out like it’s always going to. 

Nines could do better, but, inexplicably, he doesn’t seem to want to.

“Yes, you’re right,” Nines replies calmly, almost practiced, like the LED isn’t spinning red at his temple. He moves back to Gavin’s side without hesitating. “It is none of your business.”

  
  


-

**+1**

-

It’s been a little over a year and Gavin celebrates by almost losing everything, just like he predicted he would. He wakes up in an uncomfortable hospital chair the same way he wakes up at home: gasping breaths into the emptiness of the room amidst another panicked dream he’s finding it harder and harder to wake from. This one is more like a hand clenched tight in his chest – around his ribs, around his lungs, around his heart – until breathing feels like suffocating in his own skin. There are waves pressing down on him from all sides, waves that taste like regret and push him further down into an abyss he cast his own self into, and he cannot breathe around the doubt that is filling his chest like saltwater.

He thinks maybe he did this to them himself, when he dug this chasm between them and then was surprised when Nines couldn’t make it across. He feels this mistake like a wound, like something tangible that pulls at his side like teeth that he can’t ignore.

So he does what he can. He focuses on work, focuses on his responsibility to find Ada and bring her to justice, and he tries not to think about the piece of himself that he left unconscious at Cyberlife. It feels as though he’s pulled every organ and muscle from his own body, that he’s laid them out on the table in an attempt at finding where he went wrong, but the words won’t come. He doesn’t know the expression on his face, doesn’t know what the dark circles bruising underneath his eyes reveal, but they have to say more than he’s capable of. The inactivity of his own tongue is where this all began, where he first stumbled and forgot to catch himself before he fell. 

He doesn’t remember how to breathe. There is darkness under his eyes and there are bruises on his heart and his hands have never felt more empty. His fears line themselves up on his tongue until he feels he can’t open his mouth without them all tumbling out on display. This is, after all, how he always thought everything would end. This is how he always thought his life would go.

But it doesn’t.

It takes a year for them to get there, but they do. They get to where they’re going, and they almost lose everything along the way, and at the end of it Nines comes back to him like he could do nothing else. Nines fits back into his life like he never left - like a puzzle piece fitted back into place - and it leaves Gavin breathless in an entirely different way. 

It’s been a year and Gavin is in love. 

“I can’t believe you haven’t seen this one,” he mutters, sifting through an outdated binder of scratched DVDs he refuses to let Nines digitize. “Or the sequel.”

The travesty that is the list of culturally significant movies Nines hasn’t yet seen is long enough that they could spend every off evening at Gavin’s apartment watching them and never make a dent. Gavin knows it would be nothing for Nines to download movies internally, to sift through them all in an afternoon without actually needing to sit down and properly watch them, but that’s not really what it’s about, is it? It’s about Nines on his sofa, his posture stiff and unrelenting, but the sharpness of him blurred at the edges by something that looks a lot like contentment. It has nothing to do with the movies and everything to do with a mediocre, fabricated excuse to get Nines to himself without actually having to come out and say that’s what he wants.

Gavin wants a lot of things these days that he doesn’t voice, but he’s getting better. He’s learning how to ask for what he needs and he’s learning that sometimes it’s better to pull than to push. Nines is unerringly patient with him, like there’s nowhere else he would rather be than on Gavin’s faded sofa watching decades old movies about prehistoric notions of science. Nines spends a lot of time waiting for Gavin to come to terms with the mess of emotions battling themselves out in his head and he is so very patient.

Gavin pretends he has control over his own emotions and presses a knee into the sofa, half standing while he fiddles with the remote. “You’re going to like this one. It’s a classic.”

“Every time we watch a movie you insist it’s a classic,” Nines says, and he’s wearing a shirt that doesn’t belong to him, and he’s smiling up at Gavin fondly, and Gavin’s traitorous heart hammering against his chest is going to give him away in an instant. “Statistically it’s impossible for every movie to be a classic.”

“Not every movie, Nines, just the ones I watch.”

“Far be it for me to deny you the chance to show me then,” Nines laughs, light and airy like there’s not a single care in his world, and it’s all Gavin can do to sink down on both knees into the sofa, dropping the remote in favor of tangling his hands in Nines’ frustratingly perfect hair. 

Nines' mouth yields softly underneath his own, expectant, when Gavin leans in to kiss him. They're the same height like this and Nines doesn't hesitate to let himself be pushed back into the cushions. Nines lets him take control, let's himself be pinned by Gavin's mouth and the breathy noises he makes, and settles his own hands on the dip of Gavin's waist. And even if he’s in control it’s still Nines who makes him feel like he’s losing his mind, from the way his tongue moves slowly across Gavin's lower lip, from how carefully he presses his thumbs into his hip bones.

Gavin could kiss him like this forever, but he doesn’t have to. He can take his time because neither of them are going anywhere. Still, he kisses him until his inferior human lungs require him to break away. The LED is a cool blue and Nines smiles back at him with half lidded eyes. He shouldn’t get to have this - shouldn’t get to keep this - but he does. 

"A classic," Gavin assures him again, flushed and unfathomably _happy_ , and settles down comfortably against his side. 

"I'm sure,” Nines says, ever agreeable, and laces their fingers together as the movie starts. 

  
  
  



End file.
